COMMENTARY: NFL must step up to check wave of deadly acts

Aaron Hernandez, jailed in Massachusetts on murder and gun charges, is the current face of an NFL emergency. The number of player arrests, some of them multiple times, is ballooning. They're coming too fast, literally one after another.

Harsh punishments of such players have been tried by Roger Goodell from the time he became commissioner seven years ago. They have failed.

It's time to wrench the train of discipline in a different direction. Who is, in fact, responsible for escorting a series of ticking time bombs into the league? The teams. From the owners through management down to the coaches. It's their turn to pay, for them to be sent a message.

Knowingly draft or sign a player that your own internal vetting process revealed to have serious legal or criminal problems, or questionable associations or untimely appearances in the wrong place at the wrong time? Sure, continue to suspend or fine that player.

But now the team that chose to look the other way, that erred on the side of the talent and upside — it should take a hit, too.

A fine of $2 million should get every team's attention. Levy it every time such a risky player with a documented history of violence is convicted or pleads to a violent crime, or one that involves guns or other weapons or alcohol.

Repeat offenders lose a draft pick. A high one, depending on the severity of the case.

Consider this: In 2010, Hernandez was considered a first-round talent but "slipped" to the fourth round, where the New England Patriots got what, over the past three years, colleagues considered a "steal."

Put this rule in place now — if and when Hernandez's case runs its course in the criminal justice system, of course — and then take a fourth-round pick from the Patriots.

Or higher, in case he's found guilty of murder.

Do the same for conviction for intoxicated manslaughter, for which Brent is facing charges in the death of teammate Jerry Brown while Brent was drunk behind the wheel.

Brent was a seventh-round supplemental pick — and he had a DUI case in college that was pleaded down. If he were convicted, a corresponding deduction of a seventh-round pick would not be remotely strong enough a price for the Cowboys to pay.

Adjustments can be made for undrafted players, like Ausar Walcott, a former Cleveland Browns prospect facing attempted murder charges in New Jersey, and for free-agent signings. Even for those "nothing ventured, nothing gained" types like the Miami Dolphins' fling with Chad Johnson, whose long-ago probation for a domestic-violence incident stayed under the radar until he got involved in one last summer during training camp.

Goodell docked teams picks before, most notably the Patriots for Spygate and the New England Saints for Bountygate. The commissioner, and the owners who hired him, negotiated great discretionary power in the last labor agreement. For the best interests of the sport, something Goodell seems to care deeply about, he must flex that power now, against similarly judgment-deficient franchises.

There is also precedent from another league. In 2006, after an ugly brawl between the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks — and two years after the even-uglier incident in Auburn Hills, Mich., that saw Ron Artest charging into the stands — NBA commissioner David Stern not only suspended and fined seven players, but he fined both franchises $500,000 each.

Stern described it as "a message that I am going to start holding our teams accountable for the actions of their players and other employees ... What I'm saying is if you continue to employ employees who engage in these actions, your organization is going to have to pay a price even beyond the suspensions.''

Whether it was real or perceived, Stern saw his sport in a crisis, stretched the boundaries of his authority and re-defined the accepted concept of accountability.

This is a crisis, whether Goodell, NFL owners, the players or the fans in denial want to admit it or not. Quote all the stats comparing the arrest and conviction rate to the rest of society or other sports all you want, but this is no way for one segment of a high-profile, multi-billion-dollar industry loaded with resources to conduct itself. One month before training camp begins, the majority of stories and discussion involves someone accused of a heinous crime.

Including an alarming number connected to the loss of innocent life. Believe this: The families of Brown, Odin Lloyd and Kasandra Perkins don't want to hear any speeches about relative crime rates.

The NFL's ingrained culture is already under extensive review, thanks to the wave of lawsuits related to post-career brain and other injuries. This current culture of lawlessness must be just as much under review.

Teams routinely justify the annual invasive, intrusive probes into draft prospects that would make the NSA blush. But at the moment of truth, those teams find ways to justify herding the talented ones into the league regardless of those extensive background checks.

Their internal risk-reward ratio calculator has been failing lately, though.

If there were a price to pay for those decisions when they backfire so tragically teams might re-think them at evaluation time. Maybe they would settle for a tight end that's not quite as fast and sure-handed, but has nothing close to the sketchy past. Or a lineman without a DUI rap sheet.

The overwhelming majority of players who either never got in trouble before, or who straightened their lives out and benefited from that second chance, should embrace this level of accountability — especially since, for once, it's being shared.

For now, Hernandez and the players are being held accountable — and dealing with consequences for the first time in a long time. Falling down the draft board doesn't really qualify. Those are the kind of consequences teams believe are good enough.

Washing their hands of a misbehaving player and recouping his signing bonus works well for the team ... as long as no one calls it out for what it really is: abandoning its responsibility and avoiding its own culpability.

Goodell can change that. Doing it the old way isn't good enough anymore, not at all. The now-routine offseason perp walk, witnessed by victims' traumatized relatives, is the proof.